


the Deer Drabble (after 10X22)

by stickylandkitten



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dark, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied Relationships, Mark of Cain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 18:53:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3947908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickylandkitten/pseuds/stickylandkitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>what might have happened after Dean slaughters the Stynes and almost kills Cass...in a few dark hours of the rest of that night. </p><p>soundtrack: "Beautiful Child" by Fleetwood Mac.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the Deer Drabble (after 10X22)

After the rah-rah kind of rage of the self-righteous, when he had killed what needed killin’ and liked it…  
But before hell and evil had marked him, turning his human anger in animal blood lust…

A spectre, of all things, had forced him into a rage.

The memory turns up in his mind like that bad penny, over and over. Sometimes he’ll catch himself staring at his brother’s broad back hunched over a laptop and it’ll come like a daydream. How the rage started… a buzzing in his head and stomach, like a gut full of flies manifested from some miserable ghost’s will. 

The fear comes right back; he can still feel it, it overrides even the demon alpha nitrous boost the Mark constantly pumps through him. 

In a motel room, he’s staring at Sam, Garth is there and he hates Garth so much in that moment but it’s nothing like the way Sam is suddenly becoming like the smoke from a fire that’s choking him. He’s got Sam lined up and he wants to pull that trigger point blank because the rage won’t let him bury his pain. 

Bury Sam and himself then, because he can’t take it anymore, he thinks...  
There’s no where to hide with the spectre riding him and his goddam pain like a bullet train straight into the sun…

“You should have looked for me when I was in purgatory.” He feels, rather than hears the words crawl out of his mouth, those flies in his gut looking for the light of day. 

I made mistakes, mistakes, mistakes, Sam says over and over.  
Say the words, say the right goddamn words, Sammy! Dean prays.

But Dean doesn’t pray. Not to a God that will deliver him from evil, or pain, or sadness. Or loneliness.  
Not anymore, not to anyone, or anything, in between Heaven and Hell, because -

“I never ONCE betrayed you! I never ONCE left you to DIE.”  
The spectre’s energy finds and feeds off the ice sludge of this terror that lives in the pit of his soul and he says the words to Sam.  
His brother won’t meet his eyes. He pouts his lips like the baby of the family he’s always been, petulant and defiant, guilty, ashamed. 

The one true thing for me Sammy, is you…  
He almost says it.  
But with a Dean Winchester will that has shook the very pillars of the earth, he bites it off, the taste of ash in his mouth, and says

“And for what. A girl? You left me to die, for a girl?”

There’s thunder inside his skull...it’s his murderous rage for his brother…  
No, it’s Sam’s massive fist bouldering like a wrecking ball into the side of Dean’s face.

Tried and true conflict resolution. A smirk lifts the corner of his mouth. He catches his reflection in the window of the Impala, backlit by a full moon. He sees himself snarling.  
\------

Cass is lying beat all to hell back in the bunker….  
He pauses. 

The rage he felt for the Styne’s - he knows it by now like an old friend, bloodlust, like whatever feelings he may have had as a man had been vitrified, and he isn’t a man anymore, but a walking corpse of charred bone who only craves death. 

The crying Styne kid? Vindication, for the hopelessness of it all.

Castiel?  
Cass… He turns and leans against the Impala and stares up at the ice white moon, his jaw working. Sucks in two lungfuls of heavy night air and huffs them out again.  
“Some guardian angel you are, you bitch!” he barks out. The sadness comes and is washed into something darker by the Mark. The calm rage. The rage that feels easy as pie. He knows he’s been feeling it since he’d held a squalling infant Sam in his arms, watching their lives burn down around them. 

Fiery nights in Kansas. Behind Dean’s eyes the scene changes from the house in Lawrence burning with their mother inside, to Charlie’s tiny body wrapped in her death shroud, burning on the pyre he’d built for her. The rage blooms and he steels himself against it, gets in the car and floors her westward, Painted Black cranked up and the windows cranked down.  
\------

Rounding a curve, his headlights catch a family of deer hovering at the road’s shoulder, their ears up and muscles twitching, wanting to bolt.

He imagines a few seconds into the future. His mouth waters and he finds himself pushing Baby to go just a little faster.

“Red in tooth and claw, you vermin,” he growls at the universe, as the deer seal their fate and plunge across the blacktop. 

What he feels as his metal beast reaches terminal velocity with the straining bodies of the deer is - not fear. He feels the sickening thud of them against the grill, the hood. The windshield explodes in an ice storm of radiating cracks and he can’t see. Then the rear of her begins to drift and he feels the wheels wanting to leave the pavement and his stomach drops. But still no fear.

He slams the breaks and fishtails to a stop, leaves the engine running. The gravel crunches under his boots as the walks away from the wreck. 

Baby belches white smoke and rumbles steadily, always reliable. Besides her purr, the night is silent. The moon’s been the only witness.

A body lies several yards back, it’s neck twisted, a long black smear glistening in the moonlight and marking the distance it had been dragged. Steam is rising off open wounds.

Dean doesn't go to his victim. He is an entity, red/black in the darkness, and in this moment, with purpose, and exhilaratingly without fear.

He pops the trunk and rummages until he comes out with a crowbar. Shuts the trunk. Thinks that he should begin unwarding the car if he wants to keep her, come the inevitable.

Just as he’s about the bring the crowbar down on the fractured windshield to clear her out, he sees something from the corner of his eye that stops him entirely. Out of the shadows limp the survivors of the deer family.

The larger of the two is dragging his hind quarter and limping on the other shaky legs. This time there’s no indecision or fear; he staggers into the road and stands over his companion’s broken body. The smaller deer is not far behind. He’s making for the others but something’s wrong with his head and he keeps shambling off course, correcting, veering. But he makes it.

And there the trio remains, in the middle of the road. The smaller one falls and lays panting. Dean can see his chest rise and fall. The one still standing steps close to his broken brother as he can and lowers his head, nudging him again and again. Keeping vigil.

“He ain’t getting up!” Dean screams at the deer. But they don’t move. 

\-----

“Is there a woman?” he’d asked Sam. 

The whiskey is going down hot but he can barely feel it. He longs to be drunk, but it’s been weeks since he could get any release from liquor. Still. He lifts the bottle and swallows, 70 miles an hour with no windshield, nothing between him and the night coming at him headlong. 

I’m not a child anymore, Stevie Nicks sings from the radio.  
Tall enough to reach for the stars  
I will do as I'm told

The music becomes part of the wind that stings his face.  



End file.
